Brand safety

Brand safety is the set of controls that keeps an advertiser's ads away from content the advertiser considers harmful to its reputation, such as illegal, violent, hateful or misleading material.

Brand safety works at two levels. The floor is content almost no advertiser wants to fund, such as terrorist or child abuse material. Above it sits brand suitability, set by each advertiser. A beer brand may avoid content aimed at minors, while news about a war may suit one brand and not another.

Controls run before and after the bid. Before, buyers use block lists, allow lists, contextual categories and pre-bid segments from verification vendors. After, vendors scan the pages where ads ran and report incidents. Many of these tools classify pages with the IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy. Version 3.0, from June 2022, grew the list from about 400 to more than 1,500 categories, and version 3.1 was open for comment until 24 January 2025 (IAB Tech Lab, accessed 9 November 2026).

Over-blocking is the common failure. Blocking words such as "shooting" or "crash" strips ads from sport and news pages, which hurts publishers without making ads any safer.

Example: The World Federation of Advertisers ended its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in August 2024. WFA said GARM's tools had helped cut ads next to harmful content on social media from 6.1% in 2020 to 1.7% in 2023, a WFA claim (WFA, August 2024). It added that recent allegations had drained GARM's resources.

Related terms: MFA site, IVT, viewability, contextual targeting, attention metrics.

Authoritative source: IAB Tech Lab, Content Taxonomy (version 3.0, June 2022; accessed 9 November 2026).

Read the full guide: Viewability, attention metrics and brand safety.